Woman starving herself on just one meal a week so her cats don’t go hungry

A woman says she is forced to go hungry due to the cost of keeping her six pet cats.

Yasemn Kaptan, 46, said she only eats one meal a week consisting of barbecue vegetables like peppers, onions and salad.

The rest of the time she said she drinks mint tea for breakfast, lunch and dinner to ward off the hunger, and has lost five stone over the past year.

Yasemn, from Tottenham in north London, said: ‘I don’t have any money to spare – but I can’t let the cats go.

‘They have grown up with us. I have had them since they were little babies.

‘I paid a lot of money to have them, they are at the end of their life. it really isn’t fair to let them go.

‘If I eat it has to be something soft like yoghurt or vegetables. I cry every other day, I am trying to be happy with myself but I am down and tired.

‘Some weeks I am not eating properly at all and I just have fluids to keep me going.’

Yasemn got the cats when she worked as a personal shopper and could ‘comfortably’ afford it, but said she had to leave her job last year after being diagnosed with osteoporosis.

She receives £400 monthly disability benefit due to her osteoporosis, and this goes towards her rent and bills.

Yasemn also gets a £69 stay-at-home carer allowance a week to look after her partner Erdinc Hassain, 46, who has multiple sclerosis. She said she spends £60 of this on the cats.

‘When I get my carer’s allowance it goes on cat litter, cat food, biscuits and special milk, it takes up all my money. I can only just about pay my phone bill,’ she said.

‘My partner is worried about me but I have got used to it by now. I will be okay, things will get better.

‘There is nothing I can do, I will not get rid of my cats. I have had them for 17 years, they are my little babies they keep me going.’

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